ISP? What??

A huge part of the SIT program is the Independent Study Project, or ISP: a 4-week independent research project done on any topic of your choice within the general subject of your location. The subejct at the SIT Zanzibar location is Coastal Ecology and Natural Resource Management, so I chose to do my ISP on Ecotourism of Jozani Forest, a forest reserve in Zanzibar. I'm doing a partner ISP, working with my friend Shannon. I don't know how we're already at ISP though, this semster has gone by SO fast! The only thing left after the ISP is over is a week and a half of being tourists, buying gifts, and hanging out with each other.

So its been a month since I last wrote, which is way too much time for me to write about, so I'm going to do a journal entry of pictures that summarize the past month. After Pemba, we went to Jozani Forest for 4 days. I always tend to be drawn to forests/hiking/mountains (no mountains here, but still...) so I loved it.

MONKEYS! Red Colobus Monkeys

One of the main attractions of Jozani is the Red Colobus Monkeys, which are everywhere, and really social and fun to watch. This one climbed into a tree right outside our guesthouse.

"Mama Mtondoo" - Mtondoo is the swahili word for mahogany. This tree is over 200 years old, and sits at the center of the forest reserve. (Jozani)

Chumbe Island Coral Park - really cool place, beautiful ecotourism resort, already decided this is where I want to go on my honeymoon. We went snorkeling on the reef surrounding the island and learned about Chumbe's sustainable management practices.

Then we went to the mainland Tanzania for 2 weeks. One day, we visited Sinda Island, which is actually 2 islands with a very shallow intertidal zone between the two. We did an intertidal survey, recording what was there very 10 meters for 700 meters total.

Relaxing on Mbudya Island, another island off the coast of the mainland. Very possibly one of my favorite spots so far.

While in mainland Tanzania, we went on a safari at Mikumi National Park - it was incredible! Here are some pictures:

While we were in mainland Tanzania, we also visited this little town called Bagamoyo, which was really cool. We found a performing arts/music school there and took drum lessons:

Here are some more just general pictures from around Stone Town:

The harbor

These kinds of doors are everywhere, they're beautiful

Outside my friend Shannon's homestay

That's it for now, I don't have internet in Jozani, so it might be a little while until my next update! Lots and lots of love - Audrey

Habari za Pemba? How was Pemba?

We just got back from Pemba Island! Zanzibar is technically an archipelago consisting of two islands - Unguja (also called Zanzibar) and Pemba Island to the north. We just came back to Stone Town after a 10-day excursion to Pemba. While there, we did a second homestay (only 7 days this time) and had several class sessions in the field (this was the field studies component of the program) covering all kinds of topics from salt farming to house building to fruit bats. We were in the city of Wete for two days, and then in Chake-Chake (the main city on Pemba) for seven days, living with a different homestay family. I lived with a woman named Mariam and her husband, Hassan. They don't have any children, but the neighborhood they live in has about 20 children between the four or five families in the area (called Sompia - downhill in Swahili). There's much less outside influence in Pemba, and it has retained its Omani roots. All the names are much harder to pronouce - names like Zawahir and Nashfat (girls), and Fahmi and Hafadhali (boys). And the children are beautiful - round faces and big wide eyes. But there's only 60 tourists per year in Pemba, and we were 12 of them, so we got lots of shocked stares. Our first two nights, when we were in Wete, we went to the siku kuu festival in town, and you would've thought there was a herd of giraffes walking through the crowd, the reaction would've been similar. It was like something out of a movie - the girls walks through the crowd and everyone stops what they're doing and turns and stares as she walks by. Now multiply that by 12 students and add an entire village of people staring. A little awkward, to say the least. It was a very interesting experience. That shock-factor followed us throughout the entire stay on Pemba - whenever we drove through a town or village, we would be followed by screams of "WAZUNGU WAZUNGU!" (white people, white people!) In the public schools here, the children are taught basic English, including words and phrases like "Hello", "How are you", "I am fine", and "Good morning!" so that's all we heard from the children the entire time. In my neighborhood, the kids played the game "How Close Can You Get to the Mzungu Without Touching It", which involved sneaking closer and closer to me and then running away screaming as soon as I put my hand out or said something to them. I couldn't shake the astonishment from the children in my neighborhood until the last day or two. The hardest part of living in Pemba was adjusting to the living conditions there, which are much more basic than those in Stone Town. There's hardly any electricity (usually only from sunset to about 2 or 3 in the morning) and the people are much poorer than those on Zanzibar (Unguja). But once I got used to the changes, I felt much more comfortable there. Also, since hardly anyone spoke English, I was able to improve my Swahili skills considerably, and by the end of the homestay week, I was able to communicate with and even joke with the family and neighbors that came to visit all the time! While in Pemba, we traveled around every day and learned about charcoal production, different styles of house building, the endangered and endemic Pemba Flying Fox (a type of fruit bat), rubber production at a rubber tree plantation, and ecotourism on Pemba. We also got to visit Misali Island, which is a small island off the west coast of Pemba surrounded by coral reefs - its beautiful! We got to go snorkeling, and I've never wished for my underwater camera to work more (it died about two weeks ago - apparently Canon's underwater camera isn't very waterproof) because the underwater scenery was breathtaking. Oh and we were in Wete for my 20th birthday! It was the first night of our homestays, so we had a welcoming party, and at the end, Helen (our academic coordinator) brought out two cakes for everyone. Apparently, in Zanzibar, a tradition for birthdays is to feed the birthday boy/girl cake (like at American weddings), so I was fed cake by Helen, and then I fed cake to a little boy who wandered up to me and opened his mouth (there are pictures of both events on someone's camera, and when I find them online, I'll post them here). And that was after seeing the Pemba Flying Fox fruit bats that day. You could say I had a pretty fantastic birthday, not like one I've ever had or will ever have agian, which made it really special. And (of course) I'm the youngest one on the program, so we're all either 20 or 21 now.

Tomorrow really early in the morning, we're going to Jozani Forest! Technically, its called Jozani-Chwaka Bay National Park, and there's monkeys! SAM, I get to see MONKEYS!! I'll take pictures for you. I'm really excited because this is where I want to do my ISP (Independent Study Project - a huge part of the SIT program) and my Portfolio (a sort of mini-ISP), which is next week. I want to look at the ecotourism potential of the forest/bay area and use GPS and GIS to make a map of the nature trail in the forest, maybe do some vegetation identification, all for the development of ecotourism in the forest. (Emily - I'm basing my study off of Ali Garel and Lindsey Sarquilla's study on Misali last semester)

Time to go, I'll put pictures up soon!

Big shout out to Che RUSSEL GONG

Ninakupiga picha?

Translation: Can I take a picture of you? I've been saying this a lot lately... like with these kids in the village of Matemwe...

I've been living with the Sheha (mayor) of Stone Town and I asked him the other day about his job. There's actually 4 shehas of Stone Town, and he's responsible for the civil duties of his quarter of the city. He's in charge of things like birth certificates, wedding certificates, death certificates, land ownership settlements, and dealing with police reports sometimes. My family is almost completely made up of women, including my mama (Salma), my sisters Ghaya (pronounced Raya, who's 19) and Saada (16), and my aunts Safia and Fatma. There's also my 6-year-old brother Abdallah, (who I want to bring home with me because he's so much fun), 2 housemaids, Zahalulah (who's 18) and Tuarizie, who cook and clean, and the aunt and two neices are there all the time, even though they don't live there. Also, the nephew and the guy who runs their shop come over for dinner too, so the house is almost always full of people, and most of them are women under 30. Since its Ramadan (the Muslim holy month), they all fast during the day and have a meal at 6:30 (when the sun sets), called futari. We eat dates first, because the Quran says that if you break the fast with dates, you'll stay full longer afterwards. We eat without silverware, and its rude to eat with your left hand (in Muslim culture, that was traditionally the hand that you use to clean yourself up after going to the bathroom), so your right hand gets nice and messy. They all stay up and socialize or watch TV (mostly Indian/Bollywood shows or a Muslim prayer broadcast) until midnight, when they eat their second meal, called daku. Most families eat this meal later than midnight, more like 2 or 3 in the morning, before going to sleep. Its really interesting to live in a Muslim home. The gender roles are very different here, as women, we definitely don't have the freedom that we're used to from the US. If I talk to a guy my age for too long, he'll get the impression that I'm interested, and I've actually received marriage proposals that way. And the women generally don't like to talk to people outside of their circle of family and friends, so its hard to talk to women my age outside my family.

I'm out of time right now, but here's some more pictures from the past week! I miss you all!!

Around Stone Town

Baby sea turtles in Nungwi!!

My jellyfish sting... only one of the 5 places I got stung

Adventures in Paje / Life at the Sheha's house

Jambo! For four days last week, we went to a village called Paje on the east coast of the island. The village is a big tourism destination, so its interesting to see women laying out at the resort, while a quarter mile down the road is a third world village. While there, we continued our two-a-day Swahili classes, and learned about different issues that the local villagers deal with on a day to day basis. We had an assignment where we had to go into the village and use our (very limited) knowledge of Swahili to ask questions about topics like use of the sea, vocations of men and women, and religion (those were the topics that my group had), and also water sanitation, health issues, and education. One of the jobs that women have in the village is seaweed farming - they actually grow seaweed in the shallow water, gather it at low tide, dry it on the beach, and sell it to an exporting company from the UK based in Zanzibar. This is a seaweed plot at low tide:

On Saturday, our last day in Paje, we drove to the village of Kizimkazi to go swimming with dolphins!! Sounds great, right? It ended up being quite the adventure. The swells that day were 7 or 8 feet, and we drove out to the site in questionable boats. After a 45-minute boat ride, we found the dolphins!! They were really hard to follow though because the pod kept zig-zagging because of the swells. We managed to get close enough at one point, and I was one of the first ones to jump in with my snorkeling gear on to look at the pod underwater and I GOT STUNG BY A PORTUGESE MAN OF WAR. It hurt so bad, and I got out of the water and back into the boat and immediately started bawling. Meanwhile, one of the guys in the boat had gotten really seasick from the huge swells and started throwing up over the side. It was obviously time to go back. I didn't even get a picture of the dolphins :( Its been 3 days since the jellyfish incident now, and the stings are already much better.

Two days ago, we all moved into our homestays in Stone Town! I'm living with the Sheha, or the mayor of Stone Town. The house is in the busy, crowded central area of the city, which is interesting. I have to go now, but I'll add more to this post later! Miss you all!

Karibu Zanzibar! Welcome to Zanzibar!

Has it been 3 days or 3 weeks so far?... We started our Kiswahili classes yesterday (Monday) - the language is beautiful, but a little challenging to learn so quickly. We have class for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, for the first 3 weeks! The best thing we've learned to say so far is "Poa kichizi kama ndizi", which means "As cool as a banana!" (its a response to "mambo", or how's it going).

Yesterday we went snorkeling! It was incredible - I think the best way I can explain what it was like is to show you some pictures...

That's all I have time for now, Kwa Heri!

Leaving for Zanzibar in 6 days!

Hujambo marafiki! (Hello friends!)

After months of preparations and waiting, I'm finally leaving for Tanzania on Friday! I've been casually telling people all summer "Oh yeah, I'm going to Africa for the fall semester..." and now the full meaning of that statement has settled in. I'm going to Africa for a whole semester!! I feel lucky to even get the chance to do something like this. I'm also feeling pretty overwhelmed at this point. So, equipped with my Swahili dictionary, malaria pills, snorkel and fins, I'm headed to Zanzibar. I leave from JFK on Friday night (August 28) and get into Amsterdam on Saturday morning, where I have a 10-hour layover. I'm planning on leaving the airport and exploring the city for the day, I just wish I had some company. (Maybe one of the other students on the trip will have the same flight schedule?) On Saturday night, I leave Amsterdam on a flight to Nairobi, Kenya, landing in Kenya on Sunday morning (my second overnight flight in a row). One last short flight will get me into the Zanzibar airport on Sunday, August 30. After 30 hours of traveling, I'll finally be on the island!

Some quick facts/history about Tanzania:

- Tanzania was created in 1964 by the union of mainland Tanganyika and Zanzibar, an archipelago consisting of the islands Unguja (aka Zanzibar) and Pemba.

-Despite the union, Zanzibar remains semi-autonomous and has its own parliament and president.

-Tanzania is almost 4 times the size of the UK and twice that of California, and has a population of 36 million. Zanzibar's population is 640,000.

-Tanzania is among the world's poorest countries, with an average salary of $50 a month for those in work; a third of the population live below the UN's dollar-a-day poverty line.

-The currency is the Tanzanian shilling, and the exchange rate is currently 1317 Tsh to $1.

The program I'm in is through SIT (the School for International Training), a study abroad school for American students. The Zanzibar location focuses on Coastal Ecology and Natural Resource Management, so that's what I'll be studying while I'm there. We're also learning Swahili and doing a homestay with a Swahili family! As it is only 6 degrees south of the equator, it is a tropical area on the Indian Ocean, so we'll be studying coral reefs and snorkeling a ton. The first picture that comes up when you Google "Zanzibar" is this one, just to give you an idea of what the area looks like:

tbb-zanzibar04-782364.jpg

I'm bringing my computer, and although internet access is limited there, I'll be posting in this blog throughout the semester when I can. That's all for now, so wish me "Safari njema!" (have a good journey!)